Noam Raphael added the comment: If I understand correctly, there are two main concerns: speed and portability. I think that they are both not that terrible.
How about this: * For IEEE-754 hardware, we implement decimal/binary conversions, and define the exact behaviour of floats. * For non-IEEE-754 hardware, we keep the current method of relying on the system libraries. About speed, perhaps it's not such a big problem, since decimal/binary conversions are usually related to I/O, and this is relatively slow anyway. I think that usually a program does a relatively few decimal/binary conversions. About portability, I think (from a small research I just made) that S90 supports IEEE-754. This leaves VAX and cray users, which will have to live with a non-perfect floating-point behaviour. If I am correct, it will let 99.9% of the users get a deterministic floating-point behaviour, where eval(repr(f)) == f and repr(1.1)=='1.1', with a speed penalty they won't notice. __________________________________ Tracker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://bugs.python.org/issue1580> __________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
